By Steve Erbach on Friday, February 22, 2008 10:44 AM

As you may have heard, the Aegis-class USS Lake Erie fired one missile at the "dying spy satellite" and scored a direct hit. That is pretty sharp gun-slinging. The squawking from the Chinese and the Russians only underscores how much of an achievement it was. I suppose that the Chinese have more cause to be chagrined as they already destroyed a satellite much higher up last year.

I was a bit bemused by the public statement of the spokesman for an outfit called the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance:

The factual reality of using deployed missile defenses to destroy a falling satellite or a ball ... Read More »

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By Steve Erbach on Sunday, February 17, 2008 12:17 PM

You've heard about the U.S. spy satellite that's headed towards the ground. As Edison Carter used to say in "Max Headroom", what I wanna know is this: why is it that news stories these days have all got to have a scary health threat angle? Here's what I'm talking about:

One shot. That's all the military hopes it will take to bring down a dying, out-of-control, school bus-sized U.S. spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel and on a collision course with Earth.

As if a school bus-sized satellite travelling at 17,000 miles an hour landing on your house isn't enough of a worry!

Military and administration officials said the satellite is carrying 1,000 pounds of hydrazine, a fuel that could injure or even kill people who are near it when it h ... Read More »

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By Steve Erbach on Friday, February 15, 2008 12:09 PM

(Letter to the editor, published 17-Feb-2008, Appleton Post-Crescent)

Presidential primaries are the only elections where you've really got a choice. Last fall, with 16 candidates, I knew that the candidate I preferred was someone I could vote for without holding my nose.

When my guy was asked a question during the TV debates, he answered it immediately and then went on to explain his answer. But highly trained TV interviewers pounce on a "Yes" or "No" answer. They had to have been pleased to be able to interrupt the explanation -- he gave his answer, didn't he? -- so that one of the "star" candidates could throw in his two cents. When thrown into the piranha tank of a televised debate, it's best to dissemble, hedge, demur, equivocate, back-and-fill, joke, divert, and dance rather than answer a question forthrightly.

TV producers aren't interested in substance. Their principal driving motiva ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 5:05 AM

"Dedicated to Peacefully Disarming Fuzzy Math", the web site called Weapons of Math Destruction Comics was founded in 2006. The site posts a new anti-Fuzzy-Math comic every week. Just the thing for reminding us that professional educators (ahem!) are only in business because of huge public subsidies for compulsory matriculation.

Here's the latest (6-Feb-2008) comic:

By Steve Erbach on Monday, February 04, 2008 6:11 AM

Several Israeli soldiers were suspended for being politically incorrect in the presence of Palestinian shepherds. The form their incorrectness took was mooning. The incorrectness was decried by an Arab-Israeli member of the Israeli parliament, Ahmed Tibi:"The soldiers frustrated with the failure of the Lebanon war could finally make a victory sign by showing their posteriors to unarmed Palestinians."

Somehow this doesn't move me. Perhaps I'm anti-Arab. My first thought, however, was that soldiers are trained to kill their enemies. Palestinians haven't exactly been friendly to the Israelis over the decades. Mooning seems like a quite non-violent way of showing disapprobation.

But now, I suppose, the Israeli army is reduced to performing cop-on-the-beat type functio ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Sunday, February 03, 2008 7:48 PM

This may seem like a joke – and the Smoking Gun article claims that it'll be "dead on arrival" – but you're going to see more and more of these attempts to control how we eat:

Mississippi Pols Seek To Ban Fats

New bill would make it illegal for restaurants to serve the obese

FEBRUARY 1--Mississippi legislators this week introduced a bill that would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve obese patrons. Bill No. 282, a copy of which you'll find below, is the brainchild of three members of the state's House of Representatives, Republicans W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and John Read, and Democrat Bobby Shows. The bill, which is likely dead on arrival, proposes that the state's Department of Health establish weight criteria after ... Read More »

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By Steve Erbach on Sunday, February 03, 2008 7:37 PM

This story today got me to thinking about an aspect of the imminent Universal Health Care I hadn't considered before:

Clinton health plan may mean tapping pay

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 3, 11:40 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday she might be willing to garnish the wages of workers who refuse to buy health insurance to achieve coverage for all Americans.

The New York senator has criticized presidential rival Barack Obama for pushing a health plan that would not require universal coverage. Clinton has not always specified the enforcement measures she would embrace, but when pressed on ABC's "This Week," she said: "I think there are a number of mec ... Read More »

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